Steve Jobs Told Me Why He Loved Being A CEO (AAPL)

Published 9:35 am, Wednesday, January 23, 2013

"It's kind of an unwritten rule, partly because he was obsessive about his privacy," former Apple employee Glenn Reidwrites on his blog. "I think that has all changed now, but I'm not exactly sure."

While at Apple, Reid worked very closely with Jobs and got to know him quite well.

Jobs even told Reid why he loved being a CEO.

"He told me once that part of the reason he wanted to be CEO was so that nobody could tell him that he wasn't allowed to participate in the nitty-gritty of product design," Reid writes. "He was right there in the middle of it. All of it. As a team member, not as CEO. He quietly left his CEO hat by the door, and collaborated with us."

Reid got his first taste of Jobs back in 1991 when he started working at NeXT. He reported directly to Jobs, who was acting VP of Marketing at the time.

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He eventually left to start his own software company, RightBrain. But when Apple acquired NeXT, "Steve's right hand man" recruited Reid to work on iMovie 1.0.

Now, several years later, Reid says what he remembers most about Jobs was his love for designing and shipping products.

"None of the magic that has become Apple would have ever happened if he were simply a CEO," Reid writes. "Steve's magic recipe was that he was a product designer at his core, who was smart enough to know that the best way to design products was to have the magic wand of CEO in one of your hands."